Playing Dr. Phil’s Working Out Pretty Well for Adam Ray

The hairdresser father was tattooed, bald and had a moustache. A friend of mine says, “You look like Dr. Phil.” I started doing the voice and people laughed. I was going to do a set at the Laugh Factory, so I hit up Joel McHale, who was over there, and got him to bring me up as Dr. Phil. It went really well. And then COVID hit.

Jeremiah Watkins now plays a different character on the show each time. He played Rocky in Philly. He played a Starbucks barista in Seattle. He plays a pie tonight that Jason Biggs wants to reunite and fornicate with on a bed while Johnny Rzeznik plays “Iris”, which is going to be wild. But back in COVID, Jeremiah and I both needed to flex our creative muscles and we were bored as shit. So we got this black-box studio and we sat far apart and improvised these lost Dr. Phil episodes for about two hours. We would do it for about two hours and put about 30, 40 minutes online with all his different characters. It was a way to just have fun and to create and give people who were bored something to look at.

This is where I honed my version of whatever Dr. Phil was. A bit abrasive. To be honest, it’s not like I sat down and watched a ton of episodes. To me you can be excessively confidential. And I thought, “I got the voice. I like my version of it. It’s close enough, and people seem to respond to it.”

Going to acting school and always loving playing characters, I feel like I have a pretty good ability to commit and get locked in and stay in character. But it’s all just still me through it. That’s all my stupidity through it. I just have an extra layer to play with, as far as being a bit more of a dick at times. I feel like Adam Ray has a pretty good balance between hit ’em and hug ’em. That’s what I like to do with my comedy, and I feel like I do that through Phil. If you are likable, people will go to the ends of the earth for you. And I think it’s important to at least have that as a base for the character I’ve found for him. If a guest is a certain way, the crowd is on Phil’s side.

So back then I was doing these Adam Ray and Friends shows at The Store, just putting on shows with people that I had gotten to know over the years. More and more people were doing “…And Friend” shows and again it put me in a space of, “Man, I’m not doing anything different and I feel like I have more to offer than what I” have polished. I also just want to do something else. I have to throw more arrows at the wall and not be afraid to fail.”

I think most people can relate. You have these big ideas and then there are so many ways to talk yourself out of doing it. It’s really a kryptonite for a lot of people in the industry, where you’re just like, “Oh, I don’t want to bomb. I don’t want to suck. What if it doesn’t go well?”

I really love the George Bush show Will Ferrell did on Broadway. Nick Kroll and John Mulaney do Oh, hi was one of my favorite things I’ve seen in a while. I’ve always wanted to do a live character show like that. Because I also come from a theater background, so I just love being on stage. That’s why I started doing stand-up: When I stopped doing musicals in high school and played at USC, I started doing stand-up because I just loved the live fix. And I’ve always known that people on SNL came from a stand-up background and it was a dream.

So when I asked Bill Burr to be a guest, he couldn’t have been quicker to say, “Dude, that sounds like damn fun. I’m in. Make fun of my anger issues.” It really turned me on to at least do it.

Since then, he has done it the second timehe does it for the third time. I started encouraging friends to come and do it and everyone was down. Now we’re doing this 20-city theater tour in all these 2,000- to 5,000-seat theaters. We have a December show with Jay Leno, Wayne Brady, Tony Hawk, Rob Riggle and Harry Mack.

I also shoot for the stars. I DM people on Instagram. I started messaging Michael Bublé, and he said, “Yeah, dude, I’m a fan. Here’s my publicist’s info.” Sometimes it works and sometimes you message Ryan Reynolds and they let you see.

But there is no rhyme or reason to why people respond to him. It’s not like I said, “What talk show host would be funny to do that?” That’s why I think it’s funny when people say, “Oh, so why did you do Phil and not like Phil Donahue? Or why didn’t you do Oprah?” I didn’t even try to. It goes back to just having to create. You have to make your own luck and be self-sufficient. In any business, but especially in ours.

The original Dr. Phil is in this special. Was this his first time doing the show?

His son had hit me up on Instagram and said, “My dad loves your shit. We need to get him on the show.” I FaceTimed him maybe an hour before the show. Then he came into the green room and we talked for about 15 minutes. I gave him an outline of how I wanted the opening to go – how he walked up to me while doing some crowd work and said, “I don’t like your shitty attitude” to someone in the crowd. That was his signal to enter. People are going crazy because we locked the phones the first time and no one had a clue he was going to be there.

He walks on stage, grabs the microphone and says, “Uh, I don’t like your damn attitude.” Then I say, “Who are you?” And he says, “Who am I, bitch? Who the hell are you?” Then we start doing it with a mirror where I raise my hand and he raises his hand and we’re like mirroring each other. Finally he says, “We’ll be right back.” That was the only part I needed him to hit From then on we just riffed.

I had no game plan. I thought it might take 10 minutes. We did about 35. And he was down to a clown. He was really game. People are really impressed with how he played on the show. Patton Oswalt, Jay Pharoah and Joe Gatto were also great. It’s like 49 minutes, which is pretty amazing. Netflix was like, “Keeping things tight on this platform is up to you.” Forty-five minutes is a lot for a small comedy special, and we pack a lot in. So it moves, and hopefully it’s the first of many.

How different is the special from what people get when they see the show live?

Nothing is different. There are maybe 30 or 40 more minutes. We shot two hours and cut it down to 49. When people are out and about, they’re usually down to see a little longer show because they made a night out of it, unlike at home, we’re all fucking distracted . But you get a strong sense of the show in 50 minutes. I mean you get a strong sense of the show in 10 minutes.

Ninety minutes to two hours is a sweet spot for comedy. Anything more than that can get a little greedy. You want them to leave pumped.

With that in mind, we can conclude with this: Do you think that playing Dr. Phil has improved your ability to give advice?

I peer-mediated between my sister and single mother when I was eight and they were at each other’s throats. So I think I grew up fast and that’s why in most of my relationships I’m a good listener. But I’ve also had girls say, “You don’t have to fix everything. Just listen to me.” I say, “Sorry, that’s the one you picked. You should have told my dad not to cheat on my mom.”

I find that balance during the show to try to be as Phil as possible. You don’t want to just be an elevated goofy character. I think one thing people dig about my version is that it’s grounded, and it’s me trying to pull out my acting chops and make him feel like a real person. Sometimes it’s dumber and sometimes I really try to be real with things and then hit them with a joke right after.

However, I do say things sometimes in everyday life, even if I’m talking to my wife or a friend or whoever – something that sounds like a philism. I say it in my voice, and then I usually follow it up with, “(Dr. Phil voice) We’ll be right back,” because I can’t help it.

With my wife and I, for example, if one of us goes into the kitchen to get a snack, I leave and say, “Okay, honey. I’ll be right back.” And then I’ll say, “(Dr. Phil voice) I’ll be right back.” And she’ll say, “(Dr. Phil voice) We’ll keep it right here.”

So yeah, it’s definitely messed with me a little bit. Sometimes I say, “Oh, shit. I can’t escape this now. I’m trapped.” But there are worse ways to get caught.